Contents Introduction Mainpart

2. Evidence on word order changes from earlier studies
Studies on language transfer in SLA were predominantly carried out in the field of syntax (Gass, 1996). One of the major concerns of those studies was to see how word order in L2 might be influenced by the structural differences of the word order in L1 (Fathman and LoCoco, 1989; Odlin, 1990; Rutherford, 1983; Sharwood Smith, 1990; 1986; Zobl, 1986a; 1986b). There has been a conflicting evidence relating to the influence of L1 on the L2 word order in production. Some studies reported that L2 acquisition is affected by the SVO (subject-verb-object) ordering in L1 (Zobl, 1982), others suggested that the production of simple declarative sentences in English is not strongly influenced by the structural nature of L1 (Fathman; 1976; Fathman and LoCoco, 1989). Furthermore, there was a controversy as to whether an L1 basic word order can be transferred to L2 where such word order is not used at all. Rutherford (1983) found no evidence of such transfer in Japanese learners of English (i.e., Japanese uses SOV order, while English uses SVO). Zobl (1986) supported that finding but suggested that such transfer can occur in case a language makes use of more than one basic word order (e.g., Dutch). Another evidence suggested that the initial word order acquisition is guided by universal principles rather than by the specifics of the contact languages (Klein and Perdue, 1993). However, Odlin (1990) argued that there is no universal constraint on the transfer of basic word order and the infrequency of such transfer can be explained by metalinguistic awareness. An example of metalinguistic constraint in the use of L1 varying word order patterns while speaking L2 with a fixed word order comes from Trevise’s (1986) study. It was noticed that in the formal classroom setting, French speakers learning English were extremely conscious in choosing the right word order in English. The author suggested that the possibilities for native language influence might be constrained by the consciousness-raising which occurs in formal instruction. Word order transfer has been also a concern in studies on language forgetting. Transfer of basic word order can occur not only in second language acquisition but also in cases of first language forgetting (Odlin, 1990: 115). Although research in the field of first language forgetting has not been as extensive as it was in SLA, there were a few studies which are relevant to the present discussion. Merino’s (1983) study on L1 forgetting/L2 acquisition showed deterioration of the performance on word order in Spanish (L1) with an increase in performance of the corresponding category in English (L2). It also reported an evidence on L1 forgetting in production with comprehension remaining intact. The latter was argued by Liu, Bates, and Li’s (1992) study where late English Chinese bilinguals demonstrated a transfer of English like word-order strategies in interpretation of sentences to Chinese. Word order information in L1 comprehension was found particularly vulnerable when there was a phonological similarity between L1 and L2 verbs used in grammaticality judgment task (Altenberg, 1991). An interesting study that might be relevant to the present one was done by Schaufeli (1996). The experimental design incorporated two groups of Turkish speakers in the Netherlands and a control monolingual Turkish group. The L1 sentence production was tested by a story telling task. The subjects were asked to pretend that they were telling the story (Frog, where are you?) to their child or a grandchild, or to a younger brother or sister. The semi-spontaneous language was then recorded and analyzed. The two tasks employed in the experiment brought about contradictory results. From the cue-validity experiment it appeared that the immigrant groups tend to be more rigid in interpreting sentences, whereas in spontaneous speech they show more variation in the use of word order patterns. Moreover, in the perception task, the immigrant group was found to rely on word order in sentence interpretation, whereas the control group did not take word order into account. There were two explanations offered by the author for the registered changes in word order patterns: cross-linguistic influence from Dutch and language internal pressures. The former concerns a strategy to adopt word order as a clue when interpreting sentences, which is common among Dutch speakers and might have been transferred by the Turkish immigrants into Turkish sentence interpretation. The latter concerns language internal restructuring towards a more consistent pattern. For example, the more common word order in L1 might become the only word order used by an L1 speaker living in the L2 environment, and this change might be independent of whether this word order pertains to L2 or not. The evidence came from the preference shown by the Turkish immigrants to stick to the canonical SVO order. The conclusion was that the language changes were partly induced by L2 interference and partly caused by universal intra-language processes, or what was defined earlier as language internal pressures. The latter is also known as ‘language internal universal principles’. According to this principle, “an ongoing word order change will always move towards a consistent basic word order pattern, in terms of the general Head-Modifier order” (Schaufeli, 1996, p. 156). To conclude, the major syntactic changes reported in the previous studies on first language loss and second language acquisition concerned the possible effect of the syntactic structure of one language on the syntactic structure of another. CLI can indeed be a reason for a deterioration of the native language skills and an obstacle in the acquisition of a second language when two languages are brought into contact. The present paper reports on findings in two studies. Both studies were aimed at testing word order changes in production. First study reports on the so far unpublished results from a longitudinal study on first language forgetting (Isurin, 2000), second study is a cross-sectional study on L1 forgetting/L2 acquisition given the target language is the same. A brief comparison of the word order patterns in the two languages will precede a report on findings from the longitudinal study. However, the visible flexibility of the Uzbek word order does not imply that there are no dominant word order patterns. Jakobson (1966: 268-269) says that “the idea of dominance is not based on the more frequent occurrence of a given order….For example, of the six mathematically possible relative orders of nominal subject, verb, and nominal object - SVO, SOV ,VSO ,VOS, OSV, and OVS - all six occur in Uzbek .... yet only the order SVO is stylistically neutral, while all the ‘recessive alternatives’ are experienced by native speakers and listeners as diverse emphatic shifts”. Thus, as it follows from the above statement, the dominant word order pattern in Uzbekistan will be the same as it is in English. It makes the problem of differentiating between what might have transferred from English and what might have changed due to other forces (e.g., internal generalization pressures in the language) even more problematic. When languages present potential ambiguity in the interpretation of their syntactic similarity or difference, it might be appropriate to compare the subjects’ syntactic performance at one point in time with that in another point of time (i.e., longitudinal case study), or to compare the results of the experimental groups with those of control ones (i.e., cross-sectional study) to investigate a possible syntactic transfer in the contact situation. It should be also acknowledged that typological analyses are usually focused on the subject-verb object arrangement (SVO) and there is a controversy whether the word orders with indirect objects should be included in the analysis. Since in the longitudinal case study on language forgetting, the main concern was to see all possible changes in the Uzbek word order, it was decided to (1) to make a distinction between word orders with direct objects and word orders with other sentence structures, e.g. indirect objects, adverbial modifiers, etc., which are going to be referred to as “O” and “X”, respectively, (2) to focus on subject-verb position within any permissible word order.